Judy

Directed by RUPERT GOOLD

Starring RENÉE ZELLWEGER, JESSIE BUCKLEY, RUFUS SEWELL

Released 4 OCTOBER

Hollywood isn’t a real place. It’s a mirage. A land of make-believe that exists beyond the clouds. Movies are frivolous entertainments, but they’re also billboard advertisements for an Oz-like Arcadia of saturated Technicolor hues and cloying big band melodies. We’re sold the impression of Hollywood as a nirvana, and if you’re able to break inside, then all your positive (or saleable) human traits will be asset-stripped then amplified across the land, and possibly beyond. Yet supping from the poison chalice of stardom – or having it foisted upon you by an overbearing parent – can come at a deadly cost.

Judy Garland found this out the hard way. As the biographies have it, she became the star attraction of her family’s travelling vaudeville revue by accident. At the end