The critics

Psychedelic Milton Keynes

A paragon of postwar new towns it might be, but MK isn’t too well known for its cultural riches. An eye-popping makeover for the city’s main point of entry hopes to change all that…

A female samurai game in the cross-hairs of the culture wars

PlayStation’s winter blockbuster invites players on a journey of vengeance across 17th-century Hokkaido, while raising questions of cultural ownership

Sword of the Sea offers a glimmer of hope to the world

In a medium dominated by destruction or tussles for territory, it is striking to encounter an allegory for rejuvenation

Luto – the video game about grief

This horror game doesn’t simply employ trauma as atmospheric texture, but engages with the mental architecture of suffering

Date Everything! The game that turns household items into objects of desire

This quirky simulator is a sly satire of modern dating’s relentless abundance

The comic therapists who created an Edinburgh hit factory

The Berk’s Nest production company has for more than a decade been propelling improv wannabes to Netflix stardom with its soul-searching acts. And its playbills tell the story

One slow day in the life: Observer/Burgess prize 2025 winners

Winner Richard Pound reviews a hypnotic graphic novel, while runners-up Anuj Mishra reviews a Mumbai love story across religion and class, and Damien Le-Hoste reviews a kaleidoscopic exhibition of Black British LGBTQ+ history

A misfire – then Cruise control at Cannes

Amid a mood of unease, a Stalinist drama and the latest Mission Impossible settle the nerves

Helen Chadwick: a rare radical

From her 70s subversion of domestic drudgery to her naked adventures with a photocopier comes a new retrospective

This week in audio: Diddy on Trial

Plus, Christiane Amanpour's new gig and a sweet podcast about artificial intelligence

The English Concert triumph in a timeless Handel hit

Plus, the gift of a Bach manuscript speaks volumes; and a celebratory dose of Tudor polyphony

The wonder of Christopher Wheeldon

The Royal Ballet celebrates one of its own, while Oona Doherty’s tale of a lost ancestor feels oddly bloodless

Gary Oldman is extraordinary in Krapp’s Last Tape

The Slow Horses star performs in, directs and designs an intimate production of Samuel Beckett’s one-man drama of loss, finely capturing its sense of rage and reverie

Film: Naomi Watts takes the lead... and more

Naomi Watts stars as a writer grieving the loss of her friend, played by Bill Murray, and finds herself adopting his colossal canine in this bittersweet New York doggy tale