Reviews
James Dowsett
CLR James came to London from Trinidad in 1932, clutching the manuscript of his first and only novel. He soon found work, writing about cricket for the Manchester Guardian, as well as a political faith, revolutionary Trotskyism, which would inspire him to set aside his literary ambitions for political activism. James would instead make his name as one of the finest intellectuals of the 20th century. The Black Jacobins, his pioneering study of the Haitian Revolution, led by the charismatic, ex-slave Toussaint L'Ouverture, became a ground-breaking work of black history.Minty Alley is ultimately Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The Leicester Comedy Festival, always great fun, was one of the last to be able to run fully in 2020, but this year it's not so lucky. Instead of several hundred events in and around Leicester, the 2021 iteration is an online-only version with many fewer shows of Zoom gigs and interviews.The opening show, First Night Funnies, was, I'm sad to say, a rather disappointing affair, complete with some technical glitches which are, of course, nobody's fault but added to the sense of something being thrown together rather than planned.Sikisa was a lively and friendly host who immediately connected Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.” The opening words of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl are ingrained. First published in the book Howl and Other Poems in November 1956, the poem came together during the preceding 18-or-so months.Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s imprint City Lights Books published the book, after the polymath bookstore owner saw the poet give a reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco’s later to be hip Fillmore district on 7 October 1955. Until the book came Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Pushing 40, Simple Passion’s Hélène (Laetitia Dosch) lectures Paris college students on poetry and is single mother to pre-adolescent Paul (Lou Teymour-Thion). Blessed with a bountiful Deneuve-ian mane, she’s a pale but unfallen bloom in her late thirties passionately entwined, as often as she can be, with the younger Aleksandr (Sergei Polunin), a vulpine, taciturn Russian Embassy security operative (i.e. muscle), who sometimes flies home for marital vacations.“Even feminists become submissive when they fall in love,” the manstruck heroine tells her friend Anita (Caroline Ducey), blaming the Read more ...
Tom Baily
Kiwi and Aussie screen legends Sam Neill and Michael Caton have teamed up in this heartfelt and humorous remake of Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 Icelandic original. The template of Hákonarson’s story has been transplanted but all the details and fillings have changed. Director Jeremy Sims pitches us in Australian sheep country, a sunny and laconic world where life flows at a pretty breezy pace. Until disaster sweeps in.Brothers Colin (Neill) and Les (Caton) live on adjacent farms but haven’t spoken for years. Colin is kind and earnest, while Les could have dropped off the set of the 1970s psycho- Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
Bliss gets off to a powerful start. Stressed-out Greg Wittle (an endearing Owen Wilson) is in his office, trying to do several things at once: draw his dream seaside home in great detail; talk to his daughter; renew his painkiller prescription by entering long lists of numbers in response to maddening robotic prompts, and get himself out the door to see his boss, whose assistant keeps demanding his presence with increasing urgency. Something is slightly off with Greg’s affect. “I have so many thoughts I wish you could see,” he tells his daughter on the phone. “Dad, are you sure you’re OK?” Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Based on a book by Roberto Saviano, author of the Neapolitan gang saga Gomorrah, ZeroZeroZero (Sky Atlantic) is an account of the international drugs trade and the way its tentacles wrap themselves around the entrails of societies at all levels. It’s a lavishly-mounted and beautifully photographed production with the feel of a big-budget movie like Sicario or Traffic, knitting together storylines in Mexico, New Orleans and Calabria in south-west Italy.It’s also a story riddled with sadistic violence and torture and may not be everyone’s idea of escapist lockdown viewing, but it exerts a Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Do you want to spend 105 minutes trapped in a house with two people arguing, or do you already feel that your life under lockdown is quite quarrelsome and claustrophobic enough? If your answer is the former, then Malcolm & Marie is the perfect movie for you. Everyone else might be happier escaping elsewhere (I’d recommend Call My Agent if you want to enjoy actors talking about their trade. At least you get some exterior Paris scenes and lashings of wit). But let’s get back to the matter in hand. Forced to put their TV series Euphoria on hold because of Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Film is the new theatre – this we know, but does the distance imposed by the change of medium increase or decrease the impact of the story? The latest example of this problematic switch from stage to screen is the strongly acted Shook, Samuel Bailey’s debut play, which won the 2019 Papatango New Writing Prize and had a run at the Southwark Playhouse in November of that year. Although its planned transfer to the Trafalgar Studios in the West End was curtailed when the pandemic hit, the drama has been superbly filmed and is available to watch online on the Papatango website.Set in a Read more ...
Daniel Lewis
Straight off the bat, Tabitha Lasley’s soon-to-be ex-boss points out the fatal flaw in her life-changing project. Jettisoning her job at a women’s magazine, a long-term boyfriend, a cramped London flat (after it’s broken into) and friends in her mid-30s, Lasley heads to an austere Aberdeen to find out with her own eyes and ears what oil-riggers get up to when they’re “on” and “off”, that is, offshore and on-land. What she discovers about the latter is perhaps unsurprising: they drink (gallons) and/or find a mistress; something Lasley learns firsthand. She falls for Caden from Stockton ( Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The theme of a parent haunted by the loss of a child can have powerful dramatic potential, and this is the premise behind The Drowning, Channel 5’s new four-night mystery. Nine years earlier, Jodie and Frank’s four-year-old son Tom vanished during a family outing to a local lake. His body was never found, and he was presumed dead.But the supposed death itself only heightens the lurking suspicion that this show has a few screws loose. Tom’s disappearance occurred on a sunny day at a relaxing popular beauty spot, rather than in rough seas during a sudden storm, so surely somebody would have Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There's something in the water, as no fewer than three comics are launching podcasts related to the one thing we can't do at the moment – travel. They're having a laugh, aren't they? Other offerings include escapist fun with superheroes, music collections and a spoof true-crime series.Available on all podcast platforms unless stated Alan Carr's Life's a BeachThe comic invites a celebrity guest each week to talk about their travel adventures, either for work or pleasure. If you enjoyed Carr's television chat show, you love this, and it has added domestic drama as the podcasts are recorded Read more ...