Richard Hartley

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The Killer review – John Woo’s gun-filled melodrama remains a blood-soaked classic

The director’s 1989 Hong Kong action touchstone is a wild melding of maximalist violence and surreal sentimentality – with added harmonica

Glamming up ‘dirty war’: teens in Mexico glorify 1970s secret police on TikTok

AI videos let young people adopt the guise of DFS agents, sparking debate over glorifying corruption and impunity

US startup advertises ‘AI bully’ role to test patience of leading chatbots

$800-a-day position involves exposing a chatbot’s inconsistencies as it forgets, fudges or hallucinates

Meta on trial over child safety: can it really protect its next generation of users?

New Mexico prosecutors allege Meta prioritized profit, even as child abuse surged on Instagram and Facebook

Midwinter Break review – sad, spiky and brilliantly acted portrait of rupture and rapture

Polly Findlay’s barnstorming drama about interpersonal and religious tumult in late middle age is a triumph, swerving any sense of sentimentalism

‘The world was hard – this movie was meant to be a hug’: Ugo Bienvenu on his heartwarming eco-fable Arco

The polymath French film-maker might be a pessimist, but his Oscar-nominated animated film is one of light and hope – even if he did have to fund it himself

Trains review – magnetic cine-essay explores the liberation that the locomotive gave us

The advent of the steam age ushered in a great social revolution, but as Maciej Drygas’s film points out, the technology also took us off the rails

‘All right mate?’: Amazon pins UK hopes on AI upgrade of Alexa

Long-awaited Alexa+ aims to get Britons re-engaging with their devices – but it may have its work cut out

‘We don’t tell the car what it should do’: my ride in a self-driving taxi

Driverless ‘robotaxis’ will be accepting fares in Britain’s biggest city by the end of next year. Can they deal with London’s medieval roads, hordes of pedestrians and errant ebikers? I got in the passenger seat to find out

Inside China’s robotics revolution

The long read: How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? I visited 11 companies in five Chinese cities to find out

Zendaya and Tom Holland: are the gen Z power couple married? Nine things you need to know

They like to keep things private, but the Hollywood stars keep dropping clues. Did they recently tie the knot – or is this all just promo?

Instagram worse for mental health than WhatsApp, global study finds

World Happiness Report finds platforms focused on connection less harmful than algorithm-driven apps

Google co-founder spends $45m in fight against California billionaire tax

Sergey Brin gives $25m on top of $20m he’s already given to Super Pac trying to block state’s proposed 5% wealth tax

Hunky Jesus review – a hot, oiled-torso Easter from San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence

Cavorting around the cross and sexualising the saviour, a group of queer drag nuns, performance artists and activists satirise the religious festival in Jennifer M Kroot’s documentary

AI software for smart glasses wins £1m prize for technology to help people with dementia

Glasses use verbal cues and floating text to assist wearers and are expected to be available in early 2027

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About

  • About Richard Hartley
  • Richard Hartley’s Work
  • Location

Film & Tech News

  • Apple launches legal challenge against UK government demand to access data
  • Fred Stone obituary
  • Vincent Pastore obituary
  • Justin Hardy, director of Wicker Man sequel, dies three weeks before its premiere
  • Spider-Man: Brand New Day makes $932m at box office in second biggest opening weekend in history
  • Children using social media at younger age appear to do worse in school tests
  • Kmart sells out of low-cost rival to Meta camera glasses across Australia amid warnings of ‘privacy nightmare’
  • Best TV shows and movies streaming in Australia this month
  • Lonely planet: why are we addicted to the social media scroll when it is so clearly harming us?
  • Spider-Man: Brand New Day: new characters, new flaws, new tech and brain-exploding future consequences – discuss with spoilers
  • Ring Cycle review – AI staging dispenses with drama to create banal bric-a-brac
  • Nolan’s film could make The Odyssey the most sought-after book in the US
  • ‘A reminder of why we have unions’: Matewan writer and director on the film’s lessons for the labor movement
  • Nolan’s Odyssey shows what happens when a leader’s violations are rewarded
  • This Tempting Madness review – watchable psychological suspense offers Mexican standoff of gaslighting
  • Barbie sequel at risk as salary talks with Robbie, Gosling and Gerwig hit impasse
  • The Ribbon Hero review – do-gooder princess battles giant flying earwigs in update of classic yarn
  • Memory review – a cinematic exorcism through a child’s eye view of terror in the Chechen wars
  • The right hates The Odyssey because of its ‘wokeness’ – but it missed an even bigger threat to its worldview
  • Atlas of Disappearance review – forensic quest for thousands of forgotten victims of the Spanish civil war
  • Finally, we have a PM for the digital age. But real change requires more than just being good on camera
  • ‘The greatest arms I’ve ever seen’: Matt Damon’s muscular female stunt double Devyn Dalton
  • What do you wish you could buy in vending machines?
  • Why we’re all obsessed with Jimothy the raccoon, the internet’s animal of the moment
  • Stock market turmoil sheds stark light on the opaque AI economy
  • From The Wizard of Oz to Trainspotting: 25 films to watch before you turn 25
  • UK’s state investments agency hit by data breach
  • The brief life and sudden death of Zyzz: why did the bodybuilding influencer die at just 22?
  • ‘More than just objects’: Australian booksellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI
  • Trump offering early access to online posts in move seen as corruption

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