Reviews
Tom Birchenough
The fault-lines of human relationships are tested in Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure, and prove much more fraught than the physical threat inherent in the film’s glorious alpine landscapes. Its opening scenes capture a Swedish couple, on a skiing vacation in the Alps with their two young children, having their photographs taken by a resort snapper: as they readjust their poses, it seems like a search for a depiction of the perfect family. But beneath such hinted ideals, there’s a heavy underlying level of unease bubbling, which will duly unravel over the course of the film’s Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
In the past decade or so the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso’s minimalist masterworks have earned him an ardent, if particular following. With Jauja he’s moved beyond his comfort zone, by using professional actors for the first time and with more dialogue than in all his previous combined. The result is at once his most accessible film and his most mysterious, which is quite some trick. And it confirms his status as one of contemporary cinema’s great artists.It’s set in Patagonia in the 1880s, where Captain Dinesen (Viggo Mortensen), a Danish soldier and engineer, is working for the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When President Obama took office in 2009, he was riding a wave of idealistic expectations of a superior brand of politics and even a better kind of world. That all looks ludicrous now of course, and one of the lasting stains on his reputation is likely to be the way the USA has ramped up its campaign of drone strikes under his leadership.Good Kill is set in 2010, as the drone campaign was kicking into high gear. Its troubled anti-hero is Major Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke), a former USAF F16 pilot with six tours of duty on his record, but now confined, along with his team, to a Portakabin-style Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Dry ice began billowing from the stage of the Rainbow even before the house lights had dimmed and the between-band PA had faded out, allowing New York noiseniks A Place To Bury Strangers to slip behind their instruments unnoticed and burst into set-opener “Straight”, emerging from the fog like mighty sea creatures breaking the waves. The distorted guitar, laced with feedback, pounding drums and half-heard vocals, buried deep in the mix proved to be a statement of intent and set the tone for an evening which was somewhat lacking in gentle melodies. Guitarist Oliver Ackermann and bass player Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ryan Gosling throws a lot at his first film as director but Lost River is a sign he has found a single discipline which can accommodate many of his scattershot tendencies. He does not, though, find a place for his own musical output in the avowedly arty Lost River.Instead, Lost River is overflowing with overt and less-direct cinematic references which position it as Gosling’s love letter to film. Casting Barbara Steele evidences an appreciation of Italian and Euro-horror in general. George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face crops up. Sections of composer Johnny Jewel’s soundtrack music echo Goblin’ Read more ...
Jasper Rees
DNA: there’s a lot of it about. Random Googling reveals that, just in the past few days, a new study claims arachnophobia may be programmed into our DNA, that the British share 30 percent of their DNA with the Germans, while in the USA they’re using DNA to track down dog owners who don’t scoop poop. This last may not be what Leicester University geneticist Professor Alec Jeffreys had a mind when he developed techniques in DNA fingerprinting.Code of a Killer dramatises the case in which DNA was first used by police to pin a murder suspect to a crime scene (the concluding episode is broadcast Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Look at me, and think of England. This marvellous array of quirky, idiosyncratic watercolours by Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) from the 1930s until his premature death during wartime when his plane, on an air sea rescue mission for which he had volunteered, crashed in Iceland. It is full of memorable and haunting pictures. Drawing on a profound understanding of the history of the English watercolour and its concentration both on domesticity and majesty, Ravilious utilised the conventional response – in part the English distrust of grandeur and ambition – to produce a subtle assault on such Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
There was a moment half-way through Jonathan Dove’s children’s opera Swanhunter when I suddenly realised why pantomime developed its convention of the principal boy. Having a grown man prancing and posturing boyishly for the entertainment of a room full of kids feels odd, affected somehow, distorting the simplicity and sincerity of the tale being told. Which is a shame when, as here, the theatrical trappings are so vivid and enticing.Premiered by Opera North in 2009, Swanhunter is now – in a rare vote of confidence for a new work – getting a second outing from the company, in a fresh touring Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
On a snowy day in early spring in New York, the On Kawara – Silence show at the Guggenheim is unlikely to warm you up. His date paintings, postcards, telegrams and other coldly ur-conceptual accountings spiral up those famous white Frank Lloyd Wright stairs, seemingly ad infinitum. But it’s a powerful, hypnotic experience, one that seeps into your subconscious and becomes a meditation on time and space.On Kawara, who died last year in New York at the age of 81, almost never gave interviews or let himself be photographed. You won’t find him on YouTube, though you will find footage of people Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fotheringay: Nothing More – The Collected FotheringayComing to the sole Fotheringay album cold undermines received opinion it was a side issue in Sandy Denny’s career: a stepping-stone between leaving Fairport Convention and going solo. The band’s eponymous 1970 album opens with “Nothing More” and “The Sea”, two absolutely fantastic Denny songs performed with affecting and brooding sensitivity. Then the album shifts gear. “The Ballad of Ned Kelly”, written and sung by her partner Trevor Lucas, is a dreary re-write of Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere”. Anyone influenced by The Band could Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day – 18 April – has been whipping up discord among independent labels. Notably, Sonic Cathedral are boycotting it, instead releasing 365 copies of an EP by Spectres and Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, one a day, over the next year. The problem, these voices of protest say, is that that while Record Store Day used to be a fun-fuelled opportunity to focus on especially curated releases by smaller operations, ones who cared about music, now it’s simply a chance for the majors to rake in bucks off the back of “a Mumford & Sons 7” or an overpriced Noel Gallagher 12”. Worse, the Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
The St Luke Passion I heard last night was my second sung Passion of the day. The first was in a parish church as a central part of the liturgy of the day on Good Friday: nothing too fancy, as befits an amateur choir, the words of St John as set by Victoria amid shining plainsong. We stood for the 30-odd minutes it took to sing, dropping briefly to our knees at the moment of the Lord's death. The St Luke Passion was on a different scale: in the majestic space of King's College Chapel, performed by full orchestra and three choirs, and packed out with the massed Great and Good of Cambridge, who Read more ...