The trauma plot: how did culture get addicted to tragic backstories?

Again and again, audiences have been spoon-fed the same story: a character can only be explained by a past trauma, tantalisingly revealed in the last episode. Has the trope reached a tipping point?

Oh My Goodness! review – bike-racing nuns go for the prize in freewheeling clerical comedy

Silly French comedy pits one convent against another in a contest that could fund a trip to Rome but won’t raise many laughs

Having a bawl: why Avatar 3 will reduce you to a sobbing husk (just ask James Cameron’s wife)

Cameron is pulling out all the stops to promote Avatar: Fire and Ash, by telling the world that it reduced Suzy Amis Cameron to tears for four hours

‘I demand to have some booze!’: how do actors fake being drunk or on drugs?

From The White Lotus to Industry, hedonism is everywhere on TV at the moment. Actors, and the ‘wellbeing facilitators’ tasked with keeping them safe, reveal the trick to acting under the influence

All Happy Families review – childhood home is renovation project in likable indie drama

An entire family gather to renovate their creaking childhood home in this easygoing, truthful portrait

Satu – Year of the Rabbit review – scene-stealing runaways on picturesque road trip across Laos

Ittiphone Sonepho as temple orphan Satu and Vanthiva Saysana as budding journalist Bo hit the road on her dirt-bike to find his mother in Joshua Trigg’s charming odyssey

‘A cascade of terrible things’: documentary pieces together Rust shooting tragedy

Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna pays tribute to the cinematographer killed in a freak on-set accident

American Dreamer review – Peter Dinklage is charmer in oddball tale of eccentric inheritance

Hardluck lecturer Dinklage stands to receive a mansion from rich widow Shirley MacLaine in underpowered comedy

Drop review – a standout from White Lotus excels in tight first date thriller

Meghann Fahy lands a killer star vehicle with a fun, seat-edge piece of pulp entertainment, playing a woman tasked with killing her date

Joseph Wambaugh obituary

Bestselling crime writer whose work drew on his own experience as an LAPD detective

Holland review – twisty Nicole Kidman thriller is a disappointing mess

Fresh director Mimi Cave delivers an underwhelming follow-up that can’t make the most of its hard-working leading star

‘I contemplated the unthinkable’: Karla Sofía Gascón speaks out about ‘overwhelmingly painful’ Oscars season

The Emilia Pérez actor, whose offensive resurfaced tweets sank the film’s hopes for awards glory, says public hatred left her ‘on the edge’

The Wonder Way review – artists grapple with the outdoors in study of beautiful chaos

Emmanuelle Antille’s diffuse film begins with her grandmother’s passion for her garden before exploring a range of artists reimagining landscape

Don’t Turn Out the Lights review – party-animal horror turns into backwoods road trip to hell

Andy Fickman’s tale of generically ill-fated obnoxious twentysomethings is cursed with thinly drawn characters

‘Keeps me optimistic’: why You’ve Got Mail is my feelgood movie

The next entry in our series of writers highlighting their go-to comfort picks is an ode to Nora Ephron’s winsome romantic comedy