In their luxury bunker, the ultra-wealthy last survivors of a global disaster break into song – to sometimes painful effect – in Joshua Oppenheimer’s bloated if visually stunning debut fiction feature

The most frustrating thing about The Act of Killing director Joshua Oppenheimer’s first fiction feature film, the wildly ambitious, catastrophically self-indulgent post-apocalyptic musical The End , is how close it comes to greatness. Set entirely in an oligarch’s luxury bunker concealed in a former salt mine several decades after an environmental and societal collapse, the film’s production design is a triumph, the layers of sublimated memories and inconvenient truths papered over with immaculate and moneyed interior design.

The performances are mannered but work rather well given the rigorous artificiality of the backdrop. Michael Shannon plays the energy tycoon father, Tilda Swinton his brittle, mercurial wife, George MacKay their sheltered, half-formed adult son and Moses Ingram is a standout as a lone survivor from the outside world. And while it’s set some time in the future, the themes of an ultra-wealthy elite who think nothing of sacrificing the rest of humanity to preserve their own affluence and comfort – well, let’s just say it all feels uncomfortably timely.

The comedian talks big families, food deliveries, and his kids smugly beating him at Fortnight

Busy house? At the weekend it’s very rarely just us and the five kids. We’ll have nieces, nephews, my mum – up to 12 people. Our house on a Sunday is rammed.

How do you cope? My sons love Fortnight and I once thought I’d get involved. I asked my daughter, ‘Can you give me some help?’ She said: ‘Not really.’ I thought: ‘Thank you, the love of my life, my eldest daughter, for your input.’

Sure, this Guy Ritchie gangster drama is so cartoonish you could dismiss it as crass twaddle. But watching Hardy threaten people is irresistible

Tom Hardy can be very persuasive. In Taboo, people did what he said because he’d growled something intimidatingly gothic at them; in Locke, they knew he’d only phone back later if they didn’t give in; in the Kray brothers biopic Legend, there were two Tom Hardys and they were both holding claw hammers. Whenever he’s the celebrity reader on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, meanwhile, half of the adults watching wouldn’t need any persuading.

The idea that a Tom Hardy character cajoling, threatening or influencing someone is an art form in itself is the core of MobLand, a decent new gangster epic that casts Hardy as top fixer Harry Da Souza. Harry works for the Harrigans, the Irish clan who dominate the London drugs and guns scene, but who are prone to excess and perhaps not as savvy as they once were. Their charming, clinical lieutenant Harry cleans up their messes.

Dmitry Krymov, who fled Moscow after the Ukraine invasion, plans Dickens hybrid with UK and Russian actors

The acclaimed Russian stage director Dmitry Krymov the winner of many of Moscow’s top theatre prizes before his exile due to public criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, has spoken angrily of the impact of the war ahead of his first work with British actors. The Moscow-born director, 70, plans to use Dickens’s two stories Great Expectations and Hard Times to create a new performance.

Arriving in London this weekend for a short stay, Krymov, who is regarded by many western theatre pundits as among the best directors in the world , told the Observer he wants to link British and Russian performers and audiences, despite the divisions caused by President Vladimir Putin.

British artist, 87, who was visited by the king in his London home, said he did not know him well enough to paint him

Renowned artist David Hockney has said he did not offer to paint King Charles when the monarch visited his London home on Monday because he doesn’t know him well enough.

This is not the first time that Hockney has shied away from painting royalty. The 87-year-old also refused a number of offers to paint the late Queen Elizabeth II because he only paints people he knows.

The punk guitarist on the ideal length of gigs, stealing from David Bowie’s trucks and dealing with an ornery Jerry Lee Lewis

Is it true you nicked some of your early equipment from David Bowie’s trucks outside the Hammersmith Odeon at the last Ziggy Stardust show , in 1973?

There’s definitely some truth in that. It wasn’t outside in trucks though – it was on the stage! They played two nights, and after the first night they left all the gear up, because they were playing there the next night. I knew the Hammersmith Odeon like the back of my hand, I used to bunk in there all the time. I was like the Phantom of Hammersmith Odeon.

The Sex Pistols are touring Australia 5 -11 April; see here for dates

The International Booker-longlisted Italian novelist on why he chose to rewrite Georges Perec, his preference for description over dialogue and being part of an anti-gentrification collective in Milan

Vincenzo Latronico, 40, was born in Rome and grew up in Milan. In 2009, he moved to Berlin, the setting of his fourth novel, Perfection , currently longlisted (in Sophie Hughes’s translation) for the International Booker prize. Ecstatically reviewed, it updates Georges Perec’s 1965 novel Things: A Story of the Sixties , about advertising’s impact on an aspirational young French couple, recast by Latronico as expat digital creatives whose first reflex “if they spilled some coffee... was to press Command-Z” to undo it. Speaking from Milan, his home again since 2023, Latronico laughs when I quote the line: “That happens to me all the time!”

Why did you want to rewrite Perec’s Things ?
It was almost a way to keep my mental health in lockdown. I thought: “OK, you’re not managing to write anything creative, so just pedantically rewrite Perec.” It took on a life of its own but began as an exercise in keeping busy. I’d been struggling for years to capture the way our inner life is shaped by the flow of images we see online. My sexuality is defined by images I’ve seen of how people have sex; my apartment is defined by images of other people’s apartments... I read Things and immediately saw parallels. Perec was trying to describe the life of someone whose identity is defined by their relationship to objects. He flipped the hierarchy of a traditional novel by putting his characters in the background; the detail of their surroundings becomes the main stage, which was exactly what I needed.

In his designs, William Morris combined his two greatest passions: the wonder of nature and a socialist belief that everyone should have access to art and beauty. His work has become almost too successful, reproduced on iPhone cases, shopping trolleys and AI-fabricated posters. A new exhibition at the William Morris Gallery brings together everyday items decorated with his patterns, including many featured in photographs sent to the gallery by members of the public. “We’ve been overwhelmed with the response and have everything from collapsible walking sticks to chopsticks, and all manner of mugs and crockery,” says the gallery’s director, Hadrian Garrard. “The sheer brilliance of his designs and the fact that he wanted people to observe and appreciate a perfect expression of nature is something that endures.”

• Morris Mania will be at the William Morris Gallery, London E17, from 5 April to 21 September