America
Special Ops: Lioness, Paramount+ review - high-octane female cast conducts war on terrorWednesday, 26 July 2023
If you want to get a hit show on American TV, you could do a lot worse than recruit Taylor Sheridan to create it for you. Special Ops: Lioness, a bruising trip into the innards of a CIA counter-terror unit, follows a string of successes which have... Read more... |
Album: Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway - City of GoldFriday, 21 July 2023
Some country music cosies up as close as possible to pop, in hopes of dragging more listeners in, smoothing away the raw backwoods feel. The most famed exemplar of this route is, of course, Taylor Swift, at least in her early career. Other country... Read more... |
Crazy For You, Gillian Lynne Theatre review - high-kicking heavenWednesday, 05 July 2023
Who says you can't go home again? As proof that you can, and to giddy and gorgeous results, along comes the current West End revival of Crazy for You, which reunites Broadway name Susan Stroman with the Gershwin-inspired title that launched this... Read more... |
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Season 4, Prime Video review - final outing for John Krasinski's CIA heroTuesday, 04 July 2023
This fourth season of Prime’s reworking of Tom Clancy’s fictional CIA man is supposedly the last (to avoid any confusion they’ve dubbed it The Final Mission). It maintains its tradition of deluxe production values, globe-hopping locations and the... Read more... |
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review - a baggy, finally poignant finaleSaturday, 01 July 2023
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) revived Thirties adventure serials’ simple thrills, a George Lucas notion adrenalised by Spielberg. Its hero Indy Jones wasn’t built for depth or pathos, and the struggle to find reasons for his return notoriously sank... Read more... |
Fiona Maddocks: Goodbye Russia - Rachmaninoff in Exile review - an affectionate biographical portraitWednesday, 28 June 2023
In 1917, in the face of the Bolshevik revolution closing in on his country estate, Rachmaninoff fled Russia, never to return. He was 44, at his peak as composer, pianist and conductor, but spent the rest of his life in exile in the US and... Read more... |
Hello, Bookstore review - a documentary with shelf lifeWednesday, 28 June 2023
It’s impossible not to fall in love with Matthew Tannenbaum, the man at the centre of this delightful film. Reading books and chatting to people about books are two of his favourite occupations, so running a bookstore is his idea of paradise. His... Read more... |
Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now, Barbican review - going from strength to strength on an epic journeyMonday, 26 June 2023
Carrie Mae Weems is the first live black artist to have a solo show at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, yet she is hardly known here at all. So the Barbican’s retrospective is timely, especially since, at 70, Weems is making her best work yet.The... Read more... |
Asteroid City review - desert dreamsFriday, 23 June 2023
Multi-media meta-layers land fast in Wes Anderson’s 11th film, overriding reality. Here’s Bryan Cranston’s portentous Fifties TV host (pictured below) in black-and-white, boxed Academy ratio, documenting rehearsals for a televised play, whose... Read more... |
Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis, Hayward Gallery review - hope is what we need, but inspiration is a rarityThursday, 22 June 2023
Dear Earth, Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis is a mixed show of artists who address the parlous plight of our planet. The issue obsesses me, so anyone who braves the pitfalls of exploring this difficult subject has my sympathy.One challenge: how to... Read more... |
No Hard Feelings review - nothing about this queasy comedy feels quite rightThursday, 22 June 2023
Last year Jennifer Lawrence won critical plaudits for her war-trauma drama Causeway, which seemingly signalled a bold new direction for her career, but how she got from there to No Hard Feelings is a bit of a mystery. Nothing about it feels quite... Read more... |
The Flash review - back to DC, unremarkablySaturday, 17 June 2023
Superhero movies are the nearest equivalent to American holiday parades: they come along with noisy, bright regularity, and crowds either flock to them, many eager persons deep along the sidewalk, or flee to quieter neighbourhoods.The Flash, yet... Read more... |
