Reviews
Brief History of a Family review - glossy Chinese psychological thriller feels shallowSaturday, 22 March 2025
Brief History of a Family is a psychological thriller with a story familiar to anyone who has seen Ripley, Saltburn or Six Degrees of Separation. A clever young man with low social status infiltrates a far more privileged family, with devastating... Read more... |
Die Zauberflöte, Royal Academy of Music review - first-rate youth makes for a moving experienceFriday, 21 March 2025
Tamino in the operating theatre hallucinating serpents? Sarastro’s acolytes wheeling lit-up plasma packs? From the central part of the Overture onwards – just when we thought we'd escape directorial intervention in Olivia Clarke’s racy conducting -... Read more... |
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other review - a portrait of photographer Joel MeyerowitzFriday, 21 March 2025
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is a documentary portrait of photographer Joel Meyerowitz, acclaimed for his pioneering use of colour in the 1960s when only black and white images were taken seriously as an art form. My European... Read more... |
The Alto Knights review - double dose of De Niro doesn't hit the spotFriday, 21 March 2025
The power struggle between New York crime bosses Vito Genovese and Frank Costello is one of the foundational stories of the American Mafia, though perhaps asking Robert De Niro to play both of them was a trifle over-optimistic. With his track record... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: director François Ozon on 'When Autumn Falls'Thursday, 20 March 2025
François Ozon is France’s master of sly secrets, burying hard truths in often dazzling surfaces, from Swimming Pool’s erotic mystery of writing and murder in 2003 to the teenage boy cuckooing his way into his middle-aged mentor’s life in... Read more... |
Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St George’s Hanover Square review - Handel’s journey of a soulThursday, 20 March 2025
Imagine if Bach had set Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili’s allegory of Beauty breaking free from Pleasure with the guidance of Time and Enlightenment: he’d probably have hit the spiritual highs. The 21-year-old Handel, at least as this multifaceted... Read more... |
Mercury Rev, Islington Assembly Hall review - the august US psychedelic explorers cover all basesThursday, 20 March 2025
The body language fascinates. Mercury Rev’s frontman Jonathan Donahue could be playing a theramin. The arm movements fit the bill, yet the putative instrument is absent. At other points, his arms are outstretched, palms down. He might be projecting... Read more... |
Santosh review - powerful study of prejudice and police corruptionThursday, 20 March 2025
Held up by the censors in India though screened at Cannes and nominated for an International Oscar, Sandhya Suri’s 2024 film Santosh serves as a bookend to Payal Kapadia’s poignant All We Imagine As Light, about women in Mumbai experiencing less... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, Royal Ballet review - Shakespeare without the words, with music to die forThursday, 20 March 2025
1965 was a year of change in Britain. It saw the abolition of the death penalty and the arrival of the Race Relations Act. It was the year of the Mary Quant miniskirt and “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones. While cinema-goers queued around the... Read more... |
Lizz Wright, Barbican review - sweet inspirationThursday, 20 March 2025
Lizz Wright’s exquisite singing breaks all boundaries between soul, gospel and jazz. In so doing she channels many interwoven strands of the African-American experience. Wright thrives on singing to an audience: her recorded output is wonderful... Read more... |
Wardruna, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - Einar Selvik's Norsemen return to Mercia in triumphThursday, 20 March 2025
Wardruna are something of a modern musical phenomenon. Part Scandinavian folk revival, part prog rock epic and part pagan ritual, their wide-screen performances are a beautiful and mesmerising celebration of repurposed ancient traditions, the... Read more... |
Dear England, National Theatre review - extra time for stirring soccer classicWednesday, 19 March 2025
With qualifying about to begin for the soccer World Cup, and England sporting a brand new manager, it’s fitting that James Graham’s Olivier-winning celebration of the previous boss returns to the National. Unusually for a play, Dear... Read more... |
