Reviews
Gary Naylor
In the long slide from its imperial economic might, it’s hard to make a case for finding a place for “The UK” and ‘“World-leading” in the same sentence. But we’re pretty good at pop music, particularly once you offset Sir Cliff with Johnny Hallyday. C’mon Europe, whaddya got?It’s taken a while for that to be recognised by The Establishment, eventually getting round to gonging up Sir Macca and Sir Ringo, Sir Elton and Sir Rod, Sir Mick and Sir Tom. But who exactly is Sir Ray? He certainly needs more than one name, so what’s he ever done?That Knight of the Realm is, of course, Sir Ray Davies ( Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The last GP in Britain tries to heal his Rage virus-ravaged country in this sequel not only to Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later but his Olympics NHS tribute. Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) is civilisation’s softly spoken but ferociously principled keeper, stoking its embers even in the monstrous Infected, while confronting evil people visually and morally modelled on Jimmy Savile. We begin with 28 Years Later's flawed Scottish island redoubt behind us and only its boy Spike (Alfie Williams) going on. He’s now in the clutches of fake Satanist messiah Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The pitch for this movie might have been “Heat meets Miami Vice”, and it’s to the credit of writer/director Joe Carnahan that the finished result can stand toe to toe with those two without feeling any need to apologise. The Rip is also noteworthy for bringing back together those two grizzled old Bostonians, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who co-star and co-produce (and also negotiated a special bonus deal with Netflix for the cast and crew, depending on the film’s success).It’s a tough, tense tale of Miami cops battling against not only Colombian drug cartels but also shady goings-on within the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The opening track – “Ālibek’agnimi” (“አልበቃኝም” in its original title) – is a cool, close-to six-minute soul instrumental on which the organ suggests an at-least passing familiarity with Booker T. Jones. The tempo is slow, the moodiness enhanced by a smoky, wandering saxophone.Next, the similarly lengthy “Ānichī keto gidi yeleshimi” (“አንቺ ከቶ ግድ የለሺም”). Slightly less leisurely, its clipped guitar follows a reggae pattern. Again, despite a section of keyboard vamping and stabbing brass, the saxophone is what stands out. Wandering up and down the scale it then settles, fusing Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Humour is a good way of defusing tense situations. You know, social embarrassments, personal difficulties and existential puzzles. In the wonderfully titled Eat The Rich (but maybe not me mates x), Jade Franks turns her experience of being a Scouser who survived a Cambridge university education (just, and then some) into a short, but entertaining monologue. And, having really wowed Edinburgh last year, she brings this comedy of bad manners to the studio space of the Soho Theatre. But although there’s been a bit of loose talk about this being “the new Fleabag” (could this moniker be cancelled Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Brendan Fraser’s mournful, basset-hound face finds a loving home in this affecting fable from director/writer Hikari. Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor struggling to make a niche for himself in Tokyo. He’s the definitive stranger in a strange land – though at least he can speak Japanese – and parts are few and far between (a career highlight was his flying superhero who advertises toothpaste). A solitary Phillip can often be found drowning his sorrows in local bars.But all is not quite lost. Phillip gets an offer he can’t afford to refuse when he’s approached by Rental Read more ...
Sarah Kent
State of Statelessness is the brainchild of the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers’ Collective based in Dharamshala, home to the Dalai Lama and spiritual heart of the Tibetan community in exile. Four short films, each by a different director, address what it means to live in the diaspora without a homeland. And like a short story, each film offers a glimpse into lives spent in perpetual exile.The quartet begins and ends with water. An aerial shot of a ferry crossing the Mekong delta introduces Where the River Ends directed by Tsering Tashi Gyalthang. Waiting for the ferry are Tenzin and his young Read more ...
David Nice
Our most adventurous guitarist never does anything twice, at least not in quite the same form. Days after a recital in Dublin's Royal Irish Academy of Music, he included several items from that programme in a unique three-parter.It started with a selection of international lute dances from the Scottish Rowallen Manuscript – talking about them in between, as he apparently didn't in presumably a different Dublin selection – in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer, before leading us in to the Purcell Room for Bach and Adès on guitar, and then out for Part Three in a differently organised foyer, Read more ...
James Saynor
We might simply call it a dilemma, but Hollywood screenwriters call it a “crisis decision”, or maybe sometimes a “swivel”. It’s when there’s an impossible choice, in movies sublime or ridiculous, whether it’s Rick choosing between Ilsa and beating the Nazis in Casablanca, or – in the latter category – pointless superheroes choosing between a baby and the entire globe in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.Yet the crisis decision to end them all occurs a long way from Hollywood in The Voice of Hind Rajab, a brisk, unbearably fraught dramatisation of an emblematic event in the Gaza war – when a six Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Such is the USA administration’s overwhelming saturation of the news cycle that, even with the comforting presence of an ocean between, it’s hard not to find Talking Heads’ unforgettable lyric relentlessly buzzing through your brain on repeat – “And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?”. It is the mission of The American Vicarious theatre company to “... create art that challenges us to confront the gap between America’s ideals and its lived realities”. Guys, there’s never been a better time.Almost three years on from their electrifying Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley recreated Read more ...
Robert Beale
Anna Lapwood may not be the only virtuoso organist to celebrate the centenary of Joseph Jongen’s Symphonie concertante this year, but with her performance with the Hallé under Katharina Wincor she was almost certainly the first. It’s one of the most taxing – if only for the sheer stamina required of its soloist – and multi-faceted works for organ and orchestra ever written. Its four movements come in at around 35 minutes, concluding with a moto perpetuo romp of a toccata in classic French celebratory style, and the organist is required to handle fistfuls (and feetfuls) of notes from the start Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
An opening sequence set in the Andalusian city of Ronda, with its spectacular bridge across the El Tajo gorge, seems to be setting us up for a torrid adventure in semi-tropical heat. Especially after a desperate-looking character finds himself alone in Ronda’s empty bullring, before a solitary bull comes thundering out of its enclosure and gores him to death.However, canonical Christie-ness subsequently reasserts itself, with the action moving back to green and pleasant old Blighty and a gaggle of posh party guests at the country house, Chimneys. Many of them seem to be rather dim chinless Read more ...